Historic Arnhem Land expedition celebrated

In 1948 charismatic telephone technician turned cinematographer, Charles Mountford led an expedition into the so-called wilds of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. It was a joint collaboration between Australian and American researchers. Mountford is credited with being the first European to take aboriginal art out the realms of ethnographic study and into the art galleries, and in the process he made some bitter enemies in academia.

Transcript

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KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: And another report from the bush to end the program tonight about one of the largest ever Australian expeditions, this one into the so called wilds of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

It was a joint collaboration between Australian and American researchers in 1948, led by a charismatic telephone technician turned cinematographer, Charles Mountford.

Mountford is credited with being the first European to take Aboriginal art out of the realms of ethnographic study and into the art galleries, and in the process he made some bitter enemies in academia.

But this week the Mountford expedition is being celebrated at a unique symposium at the National Museum of Australia, attended by descendents of the Aboriginal people involved, whose children are now able to revisit some of the cultural treasures it amassed.

Matt Peacock reports and I should say that this story contains images of Aboriginal people who have since died.

PRESENTER, SCIENTISTS STUDY WILD LIFE IN ARNHEM LAND (SERIES 2): In the north of Australia, scientists of the Arnhem Land expedition, conducted by the Australian Department of Information and the National Geographic Society of America, set out along the Alligator River to gather specimens.

MATT PEACOCK, REPORTER: Just three years after World War II, Arnhem Land was still a wild place of mystery to most Australians but it was soon subject to an invasion of scientist and photographers, which made it the talk of the nation.

RAY SPECHT, EXPEDITION BOTANIST: Well, it was the expedition to end all expeditions.

MARGO NEALE, NATIONAL MUSEUM: It was headline through every paper, magazines, Women's Day, even the Bulletins and the Hobart Mercury. Headline.

MATT PEACOCK: The so called Mountford expedition, a joint Australian venture with the American Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic had the nation agog, and included pioneering radio reports from ABC radio's Colin Simpson using this wire recorder.

COLIN SIMPSON, ABC RADIO: Arnhem Land is like no other part of Australia I've seen. At oenpelli, the expedition was camped and the green canvas tents beside a beautiful inland lagoon.

KIM BEAZLEY, AMBASSADOR DESIGNATE TO US: This was part of, this was an outgrowth of the beginnings of a massive Arthur Calwell led propaganda campaign to encourage connection between Australia and the US and to encourage American migration.

MARGO NEALE: The Americans had thought they'd struck gold. I mean, you know, this is this so called unexplored part of the world with all this undiscovered species and culture and they sort of believed they would be basically the first in.

MATT PEACOCK: A party of 17 with scientists from over 10 disciplines spent seven months in Arnhem Land mapping bird life, plant life, and chronicling details of the world's oldest human culture.

COLIN SIMPSON, ABC RADIO: When it came to matters of Aboriginal food, the one to talk to was Miss Margaret McArthur.

MARGO NEALE: The media loved these stories. You know, they were intrigued by this lone white woman going off unescorted with Aboriginal people, you know, cannibals, so it brought out all this sort of fear of the unknown.

KIM BEAZLEY: Six government departments were involved so they could use aircraft from the air force, they could use boats from the navy.

RAY SPECHT: There were difficulties of getting supplies around from Darwin to Groote Eylandt, supplied by, well there was a cyclone just before Milingimbi and went on, was stranded on a reef.

COLIN SIMPSON, ABC RADIO: Have many botanist collected in Arnhem Land before or was this a virgin field?

RAY SPECHT: Well not quite but the last one that was done was when Robert Brown came round with Flinders.

MATT PEACOCK: At 23, botanist Ray Specht was then the youngest member of the expedition.

This week, he joined his former colleagues, their families and descendants of the Aboriginal penal involved at the National Museum Symposium.

Despite its early fame, the expedition's impact was soon to fade, largely due to academic jealousy of its controversial leader.

MARGO NEALE: There was a very Sydney based anthropological establishment who thought it was rightfully their place to lead Australia's greatest scientific expedition. Instead it was led by a self proclaimed photographer, ethnographer called Charles Percy Mountford.

MATT PEACOCK: Mountford, a former stable hand, mechanic, tram driver and postal worker had become a cinematographer with a passion for Aboriginal culture.

MARGO NEALE: I mean the audacity of this tram driver, amateur, untrained so called ethnographer leading this enormous, well supported at the highest levels across two countries, leading an expedition like this.

MATT PEACOCK: As the expedition got under way, Sydney University's anthropology Professor Adolphus Elkin warned that Mountford was a good photographer, especially of still subjects, but not a trained anthropologist, much to his own regret.

CHARLES MOUNTFORD, EXPEDITION LEADER: The academic world at that time was particularly vicious towards us. They caused us a lot of trouble.

MATT PEACOCK: But Mountford beat them all, according to Professor Margo Neale, with one of his achievements being to catapult Aboriginal art out of the academic world and into Western galleries

MARGO NEALE: He saw Aboriginal bark painting not as ethnography or artefact but as art. And that has rebounded down the decades and is really apparent now that he could see, without denying the cultural content, he could see the artistic values and merits in it as well.

MATT PEACOCK: It's the painters' descendants like Dr Joe Gumbula joining this week's celebrations who say it's now time for institutions around the world to return some of those images to the communities they came from.

Joe GUMBULA, ABORIGINAL ELDER: We feel elder people are returning back to the community, back to, you know, the spirit, back to the people where they belong to.

MATT PEACOCK: Human remains too were gathered by the expedition and although some were returned last year by the Smithsonian Institution, others its curator Dan Rogers admits were not, to the dismay of oenpelli traditional owners.

DAN ROGERS, CURATOR ARCHAEOLOGY SMITHSONIAN: I believe we did retain some of the skulls, yes.

DONALD GUMURDUL, TRADITIONAL OWNER: I feel very strongly I feel we would like all of them, all of those remains to be returned back to us.

MARGO NEALE: There's no question in the mind of the Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land that this is their culture, this is their collection, this is their heritage.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Matt Peacock with that report.

Thanks to Screen Australia for the use of footage in this story. The footage was from "Australian Diary: Scientists Study Land and Life in Arnhem Land".